Tag: 2024

No, CNN and BBC, 2024 Wasn’t the ‘Hottest Year on Record’ When ALL of the Available Evidence Is Considered

A number of mainstream media outlets have uncritically echoed the proclamation of 2024 being the “hottest year on record,” such as, CNN with a story titled, “2024 Confirmed as World’s Hottest Year on Record”, and the BBC with a headline that declared, “2024 Confirmed as Hottest Year Ever Recorded.” When these media reports are examined in long-term historical context of the available global temperature data, it becomes clear that the claims lack the certainty their headlines proclaim and are likely false or exaggerated.

From ClimateRealism


By Anthony Watts

A number of mainstream media outlets have uncritically echoed the proclamation of 2024 being the “hottest year on record,” such as, CNN with a story titled, “2024 Confirmed as World’s Hottest Year on Record“, and the BBC with a headline that declared, “2024 Confirmed as Hottest Year Ever Recorded.” When these media reports are examined in long-term historical context of the available global temperature data, it becomes clear that the claims lack the certainty their headlines proclaim and are likely false or exaggerated.

A close examination reveals that such declarations are predominantly based on data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (CCCS), a European organization but only one of several global temperature monitoring systems. Their press release, 2024 – a second record-breaking year, following the exceptional 2023 became immediately re-used by media outlets around the world.

The CCCS says:

  • 2024 was the warmest year in a multi-dataset record of global temperature going back to 1850.
  • 2024 had a global average temperature of 15.10°C; 0.12°C higher than the previous highest annual value in 2023.
  • 2024 was 0.72°C warmer than the 1991–2020 average, and 1.60°C warmer than the pre-industrial level, making it the first calendar year to exceed 1.5 above that level

But, those numbers differ from those of other sources, such as a data set from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA reports:

The year 2024 was the warmest year since global records began in 1850 at 1.29°C (2.32°F) above the 20th century average of 13.9°C (57.0°F). This value is 0.10°C (0.18°F) more than the previous record set last year. The ten warmest years in the 175-year record have all occurred during the last decade (2015–2024).

While NOAA repeats the “hottest year on record” claim, their numbers differ from Copernicus, undermining any confidence one might have in the precision of the global average temperature measurements for 2024, and any record breaking claims flowing from their disparate data measurements.

Further, these claims completely ignore the evidence based research, such as the surface stations project conducted by The Heartland Institute, showing that the Urban Heat Island effect and the poor placement of temperature stations used to measure temperatures, from which long-term temperature data is gathered, may account for as much as 50 percent of recent warming, with the remainder likely being partly or wholly natural, such as being driven by El Niño events.

It’s also worth noting that the phrase “hottest year on record” typically refers to records spanning about 150 years—a mere blink in geological time. Paleoclimatological evidence shows that Earth has experienced periods with significantly hotter temperatures long before industrial revolution. For instance, during the Eemian interglacial period around 120,000 years ago, global temperatures were comparable to or even exceeded current levels.

See the graph below from a scientific study titled “A 485-million-year history of Earth’s surface temperature.”

How quickly they forget: Media Confirms the Earth Is Not Abnormally Warm, Rather It Is in Its Coldest Period in 485 Million Years. Proxy data also suggests temperatures in more recent periods, like the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Climate Optimum were likely comparable to or even higher than they are today, despite carbon dioxide levels being significantly lower.

In the rush to blame climate change for 2024’s temperatures, the media also underappreciates the impact of natural climate phenomena such as El Niño on temperatures in 2023 and 2024. This creates an oversimplified narrative that ignores the complexities of climate systems. The El Niño event in of 2023-2024 has been a major contributor to the recent global temperature anomalies, with many reports stating that it significantly boosted global temperatures compared to a neutral ocean pattern state, making 2024 one of the hottest years on record; this is due to the warming ocean surface temperatures associated with El Niño adding to the overall heat in the climate system.

According to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, following the conclusion of the 2023–2024 El Niño event, there has been a notable decline in ocean temperatures. This cooling trend is particularly evident in the eastern and central tropical Pacific regions. NOAA reported that by December 2024, La Niña conditions had emerged, characterized by below-average sea surface temperatures across these areas.

Oceans are considered the biggest influence on atmospheric temperature, as they absorb the majority of the sun’s radiation, acting as a massive heat reservoir that regulates global climate by storing and distributing heat around the planet through ocean currents; this means that changes in ocean temperature significantly affect the overall atmospheric temperature. Therefore, with cooling oceans, it stands to reason that cooler global atmospheric temperatures are likely ahead for 2025.

In summary, while global temperatures have gradually risen in recent decades, it is unclear whether portraying 2024 as unequivocally the “hottest year on record” is justified, or rather whether it is a temporary anomaly reflecting, in part, a combination of natural conditions and human measurement error.

What is clear is that regardless of the global average temperature human welfare has never been better. According to Our World in Data, average life expectancy has more than doubled during the recent warming. Further, deaths from extreme weather are markedly down, and deaths tied to temperatures have declined because cold kills more people than warmth.

CNN and BBC do a great disservice to their audiences by not placing their claims in the broader historical context of long-term temperatures and data, and by downplaying or ignoring entirely natural weather phenomena, and problematic temperature measurement conditions, which impact temperature measurements, when asserting that temperatures are the highest on record. An approach that considers the full range of scientific data, historical context, and natural variability would provide a more accurate and less alarming understanding of our planet’s climate dynamics.

Unfortunately, as Climate Realism has demonstrated repeatedly, the media seems more interested in pushing a climate doom narrative than factually reporting the complex truth about climate.

UK Temperatures In 2024

Of course, warm years now appear to be more common, but this is WEATHER not CLIMATE. As is often the case, it is the relative absence of exceptionally cold years which has pushed the average up in the last couple of decades.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

UK annual temperatures have dropped for the second year running, though the Met Office will emphasise what they claim is a remorseless upwards trend. However, they don’t show error margins in their graphs, and as we know, nine out of ten of the weather stations used for their UK temperature dataset are junk or near junk sites, where poor siting can mean temperatures may be overstated by as much as five degrees for Class 5 and two degrees for Class 4:

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2024/05/27/poorly-sited-stations-undermine-met-offices-uk-temperature-claims/

Given such poor siting, it is not credible that the Met Office can measure UK temperatures to a hundredth of a degree, as they ridiculously claim. If we allow for just one degree of uncertainty, temperatures in recent years are statistically indistinguishable from 20thC ones:

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/datasets/Tmean/date/UK.txt

We don’t know of course how good the Met Office network was years ago, as they cannot tell us. But this makes calculating long term trends even more problematic.

We must also bear in mind that the Met Office make no allowance for UHI, which has artificially increased temperatures at many stations since the 19thC. If we look at daily maximum temperatures, which are less affected by UHI, rather than means, we some interesting results:

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/datasets/Tmax/date/UK.txt

The general increase in average temperatures is still evident. But when we highlight only the years over 13C, we see that there were other years as warm as last year, even as far back as 1921, which was just 0.06C cooler. 1949 and 1959 were at similar levels too.

Of course, warm years now appear to be more common, but this is WEATHER not CLIMATE. As is often the case, it is the relative absence of exceptionally cold years which has pushed the average up in the last couple of decades.

Even 2022, which was 0.7C hotter than 1921, is within the 1C margin of error.

Why we now predominantly get warm years now is a matter for debate! British weather is, of course, highly variable, changing drastically from week to week, and year to year. And it all depends on where the airflow is coming from, air pressure and other meteorological factors.

It is this mixture of weather ultimately which determines whether we have a warm or a cold year.

CfD Subsidies Hit Record High In 2024

CfD subsidies hit a record high of £2362 million last year, beating the previous record set in 2020, when market electricity prices were exceptionally low because of lockdowns. The LCCC data runs up to Dec 22nd, so the final figure for 2024 will be slightly higher still.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

https://dp.lowcarboncontracts.uk/dataset/actual-cfd-generation-and-avoided-ghg-emissions

CfD subsidies hit a record high of £2362 million last year, beating the previous record set in 2020, when market electricity prices were exceptionally low because of lockdowns. The LCCC data runs up to Dec 22nd, so the final figure for 2024 will be slightly higher still.

Subsidies covered 30.2 TWh of generation, at an average of £78/MWh. In other words, renewable schemes covered by CfD were paid about double the market price in overall terms.

Wind power accounted for £1970 million of the overall subsidy, with biomass adding a further £299 million.

Total subsidies for wind power tot up to £9.1 billion since the CfD scheme started in 2016, with biomass costing another £2.5 billion.

Meanwhile subsidies for wind power via the Renewable Obligation Scheme cost a further £4.6 billion in the year ended March 2024.

In short, wind power is now being subsidised to the tune of about £7 billion a year, when constraint payments are included.

Hurricane Data For 2024

CSU have already updated their global hurricane database to include 2024

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

CSU have already updated their global hurricane database to include 2024:

https://tropical.atmos.colostate.edu/Realtime/index.php?arch&loc=global

There was nothing unusual at all about last year’s numbers, and the long-term trends speak for themselves, either in total hurricane numbers or major hurricanes.

Mid August 2024 Normal Arctic Ice Melt in Progress

2024 tracked somewhat lower than the 18-year average in late July, then in August drew near to average before slipping into deficit the last 5 days. In the end, 2024 is presently close to 2023 and 2007, ~200k km2 below the 18 year MASIE average.

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

The graph above shows Mid July to Mid August daily ice extents for 2024 compared to 18 year averages, and some years of note.

The black line shows on average Arctic ice extents during this period decline 2.4M km2 down to 5.8M Km2 by day 229.  2024 tracked somewhat lower than the 18-year average in late July, then in August drew near to average before slipping into deficit the last 5 days. In the end, 2024 is presently close to 2023 and 2007, ~200k km2 below the 18 year MASIE average.

Remarkably, SII is showing much larger deficits to average than MASIE does. This period began with SII having a gap of 400k km2 less ice extent than MASIE, then increased that deficit as high as 700k km2, before reporting a gap of 537k km2 on day 229, a difference of half a Wadham. The effect will be for SII to report much lower monthly averages for ice extents during July and August, prior to the annual minimum occurring in September.

Why is this important?  All the claims of global climate emergency depend on dangerously higher temperatures, lower sea ice, and rising sea levels.  The lack of additional warming prior to 2023 El Nino is documented in a post UAH June 2024: Oceans Lead Cool Down.

The lack of acceleration in sea levels along coastlines has been discussed also.  See Observed vs. Imagined Sea Levels 2023 Update.

Also, a longer term perspective is informative:

The table below shows the distribution of Sea Ice on day 229 across the Arctic Regions, on average, this year and 2007. At this point in the year, Bering and Okhotsk seas are open water and thus dropped from the table.

Region2024229Day 229 Ave2024-Ave.20072292024-2007
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere56232625828731-2054695673531-50270
 (1) Beaufort_Sea591190698788-107598767181-175991
 (2) Chukchi_Sea554701425156129544253092301609
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea641562535416106146154536487026
 (4) Laptev_Sea26897124091128059284910-15939
 (5) Kara_Sea1441496702-82288201203-186789
 (6) Barents_Sea021833-2183317229-17229
 (7) Greenland_Sea120478216573-96095310070-189591
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence4636653298-693275105-28739
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago319281399712-80431382407-63126
 (10) Hudson_Bay3331958874-2555589354-56034
 (11) Central_Arctic30319233080445-485233137188.82-105266

The overall deficit to average is 205k km2, (3.5%).  The major deficits are in  Beaufort, Kara, Greenland Sea and CAA (Canadian Archipelago), partly offset by surpluses in Chukchi and East Siberian.

For more on the differences between MASIE and SII see this post:

Support MASIE Arctic Ice Dataset

Illustration by Eleanor Lutz shows Earth’s seasonal climate changes. If played in full screen, the four corners present views from top, bottom and sides. It is a visual representation of scientific datasets measuring ice and snow extents.

Arctic Ice Slight Deficit July 31, 2024

Why is this important? All the claims of global climate emergency depend on dangerously higher temperatures, lower sea ice, and rising sea levels. The lack of additional warming prior to 2023 El Nino is documented in a post UAH June 2024: Oceans Lead Cool Down.

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

The graph above shows July daily ice extents for 2024 compared to 18 year averages, and some years of note.

The black line shows on average Arctic ice extents during July decline 2.7M km2 down to 6.9M Km2 by day 213.  2024  tracked a little higher than the 18-year average early in July, then slipped into deficit in the last 10 days.  SII was close to MASIE early in July, then diverged mid month showing up to 666k km2 lower until endig July ~300k km2 less extent than MASIE.  2023 was higher than average, while 2007 ended ~ 540k km2 in deficit to average.  2020 ice ended nearly 1 Wadham or 1M km2 in deficit.

Why is this important?  All the claims of global climate emergency depend on dangerously higher temperatures, lower sea ice, and rising sea levels.  The lack of additional warming prior to 2023 El Nino is documented in a post UAH June 2024: Oceans Lead Cool Down.

The lack of acceleration in sea levels along coastlines has been discussed also.  See Observed vs. Imagined Sea Levels 2023 Update.

Also, a longer term perspective is informative:

The table below shows the distribution of Sea Ice on day 213 across the Arctic Regions, on average, this year and 2007. At this point in the year, Bering and Okhotsk seas are open water and thus dropped from the table.

Region2024213Day 213 Ave.2024-Ave.20072132024-2007
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere66346376882380-2477436344860289777
 (1) Beaufort_Sea717847791600-73754760576-42729
 (2) Chukchi_Sea702720534093168628382350320370
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea76089474077220122445385315509
 (4) Laptev_Sea223615368247-144631314382-90767
 (5) Kara_Sea136159163171-27012239232-103073
 (6) Barents_Sea45431406-3095223703-23249
 (7) Greenland_Sea237168294526-57358324737-87570
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence170245145062251839417976066
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago454695540106-85411510063-55368
 (10) Hudson_Bay129434133138-37049365535780
 (11) Central_Arctic30982833138628-403453154837-56554

The overall deficit to average is 248k km2, (4%).  The major deficits are in Laptev, Beaufort and CAA (Canadian Archipelago), while Kara is the only region with a large surplus.

Illustration by Eleanor Lutz shows Earth’s seasonal climate changes. If played in full screen, the four corners present views from top, bottom and sides. It is a visual representation of scientific datasets measuring ice and snow extents.

Democratizing and navigating 2024-era markets

David Goone was ready to retire after guiding Intercontinental Exchange Inc. (ICE) through over twenty years of industry-defining growth, including the acquisition of (among others) the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

From CFACT

By Duggan Flanakin

David Goone was ready to retire after guiding Intercontinental Exchange Inc. (ICE) through over twenty years of industry-defining growth, including the acquisition of (among others) the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

Then, he got an intriguing offer — to become the new chief executive officer at tZERO, pioneering the adoption of blockchain technology for capital markets and a solutions provider for the efficient trading of private assets.

The prospect before his eyes was the opportunity to build a blockchain-friendly, regulated automated trading system (ATS) providing continuous liquidity.

tZERO’s current EVP and Chief Legal and Corporate Affairs Officer (and the former interim CEO who helped to recruit Goone) Alan Konevsky calls the company “…the infrastructure layer; the connective tissue between supply and demand, between legacy and digital, and between digital and digital.”

Many forward-thinking investors today seek to incorporate real or philosophical elements of the crypto thesis into the securities issuance and trading environment – such as the instantaneous settlement of trades, relative independence of middlemen, lower transaction costs, transparency, automation, and portability of asset ownership, including the ability to hold assets in a personal wallet and have interactivity/utility of instruments – to ultimately be independent of institutions.

Setting aside that, with increasing AML and other regulations, much of this is not really available in the crypto markets today, anyway; the securities ecosystem requires a particular focus on marrying legacy concepts and processes with the promise of technology.

For example, says Goone, who was a member of the board of directors of the DTCC, the settlement cycle has been getting shorter with conventional securities.

While it is still longer than instantaneous, it is now closer to “tZERO” than the ‘t+5’ (meaning five days to close a trade) scenario of the relatively recent past.

It took years for Wall Street, including NYSE and other exchanges, to go from t + 2 to recently launched t + 1.

There are ultimately two main reasons why people want to tokenize their securities in 2024 – One is that the blockchain creates a single public and immutable database for assets – rather than one for you, one for your transfer agent, one for your broker-dealer, one for your custodian, and so on.

The second reason is ‘smart contract automation’, which is one of the more exciting aspects of blockchain technology and part and parcel of a wider push into increasing automation across all industries, including through the use of AI.

The marriage of digitally native single public database architecture with smart contract automation is probably the first time anyone endeavored to create public, accessible, and open infrastructure for the exchange of value since the advent of paper money and coinage.

The ability to create each security, each item of value, as a piece of software that is forever programmed to act in certain ways and not to act in other ways, a relatively new market phenomenon, says Konevsky, allows automating compliance, transfer restrictions, and other functions while eliminating or reducing reliance on intermediaries otherwise needed to check documents and papers to ensure protocols have been followed.

This is particularly true for private assets – such as private equity and securitized real-world assets (RWA) – and the broken secondary liquidity options for them.

Says Goone, “We realized there were a lot of types of assets we could tokenize and put on the blockchain, including turning assets in the sports, arts, and entertainment arenas into non-traditional securities.”

This enables people to buy shares of an athlete’s revenue, or sports team or, a piece of art, or even a motion picture.

Or, as it turns out, a hotel.

About six years ago, the St. Regis Aspen Resort, led by Stephane De Baets, became a leading hotel to offer blockchain-enhanced securities. These shares have been actively and successfully traded on the alternative trading system operated by tZERO’s broker-dealer subsidiary. Many investors bought and held their shares, while others traded them more actively. One reason for this is that their shares entitle them to special dining or skiing experiences and provide other benefits.

It’s like joining a private club but with residual financial rewards, perhaps dependent on the size of one’s sharehold.

With traditional currencies and investments not tied to real-world assets (RWA) falling under heavy scrutiny of late and often overly reliant on good or bad ‘PR’, toppling governments, and the ebbs and flows of an antiquated marketplace, it’s intriguing to look at alternatives that are ‘next-gen’ in 2024, however also offer traditional safety and investment security for any who enter the arena, like gold and real estate.

This article originally appeared at Real Clear Markets

The 2024 Solar Eclipse: What’s All the Fuss About?

It’s also cool to hear people around you respond to what they are witnessing. The air temperature becomes noticeably cooler. Scattered low clouds that might have threatened to get in the way mostly disappear, just as they do after sunset.

From Roy Spencer, PhD

April 17th, 2024 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

I feel fortunate to have witnessed two total solar eclipses in my lifetime. The first was at Center Hill Lake in central Tennessee in 2017, then this year’s (April 8) eclipse from Paducah, Kentucky. Given my age (68), I doubt I will see another.

For those who have not witnessed one, many look at the resulting photos and say, “So what?”. When I look at most of the photos (including the ones I’ve taken) I can tell you that those photos do not fully reflect the visual experience. More on that in a minute.

Having daytime transition into night in a matter of seconds is one part of the experience, with the sounds of nature swiftly changing as birds and frogs suddenly realize, “Night sure came quickly today!”

It’s also cool to hear people around you respond to what they are witnessing. The air temperature becomes noticeably cooler. Scattered low clouds that might have threatened to get in the way mostly disappear, just as they do after sunset.

But why are so many photos of the event… well… underwhelming? After thinking about this over the past week, I believe the answer lies in the extreme range of brightness a solar eclipse produces that cameras (even good ones) have difficulty capturing. This is why individual photos you see will often look different from one another. Depending upon camera exposure settings, you will see different features.

This was made very apparent to me during this year’s eclipse. Due to terrible eclipse traffic, we had to stop short of our intended destination, and I had only 10 minutes to set up a telescope and two cameras, so some of my advance planning went out the window. I was watching the “diamond” of the diamond ring phase of totality, as the last little bit of direct sunlight disappears behind the moon. At that point, it is (in my opinion) possible with the naked eye to perceive a dynamic range greater than any other scene in nature: from direct sunlight of the tiny “diamond” to the adjacent night sky with stars. I took the following photo with a Canon 6D MkII camera with 560 mm of stacked Canon lenses, which (barely) shows this extreme range of brightness.

In order to pull out the faint Earthshine on the moon’s dark side in this photo, and the stars to the left and upper-left, I had to stretch this exposure by quite a lot.

From what I have read (and experienced) the human eye/brain combination can perceive a greater dynamic range of brightness than a camera can. This is why photographers have to fool so much with camera settings to capture what their eyes see. In this case, I perceived the “diamond” of direct sunlight was (of course) blindingly bright, while the sun’s corona extending 2 to 3 solar diameters away from the sun was much less bright (in fact, the solar corona is not even as bright as a full moon). But in this single photo, both the diamond and the corona were basically at the maximum brightness the camera could capture at this exposure setting (0.5 sec, ISO400, f/5.6), even though visually they had very different brightnesses.

Many of the better photos you will find are composites of multiple photos taken over a very wide range of camera settings, which more closely approximate what the eye sees. I found this one that seems closer to what I witnessed (photo by Mark Goodman):

So, if you have never experienced a total solar eclipse, and are underwhelmed by the photos you see, I submit that the actual experience is much more dramatic than the photos indicate.

Here’s some unedited real-time video I took with my Sony A7SII camera mounted on a Skywatcher Esprit ED80 refractor telescope. We were in a Pilot Travel Center parking lot with about a dozen other cars that also didn’t make it o their destinations due to the traffic. I used a solar filter until just before totality, then removed the filter. The camera is on an automatic exposure setting. I’ve done no color grading of the video. Skip ahead to the 3 minute mark to catch the transition to totality:

Arctic Ice Marches Upward 2024

March is the maximum month in the annual cycle in contrast to September being the minimum Arctic ice extents.

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

The animation shows end of March Arctic ice extents on day 91 over the last 19 years (length of MASIE dataset). Of course central Arctic basins are frozen solid, and the fluctuations are visible on the marginal basins both the Atlantic side (right) and the Pacific (left). Note the higher extents in 2012, followed by lesser ice, now overcome by 2024.

The graph below shows Monthly averages for March since 2007.  March is the maximum month in the annual cycle in contrast to September being the minimum Arctic ice extents. Note the low 2007 extents followed by several years over15M km2, then lesser extents 2015 to 2018, and increasing extents up to 2024 nearly averaging 15M for the month.

The graph below shows March daily ice extents for 2024 compared to 18 year averages, and some years of note.

The black line shows during March on average Arctic ice extents nearly reach 15 Wadhams (15M km2) on Day 62, March 2.  A slow decline is normal until Day 91, March 31.  However, that period in 2024 saw Arctic ice go over 15M on day 68 and remain there until day 79. Afterward both MASIE and SII show above average extents to month end.  2006 was the first year in this dataset and ended March ~800k km2 in deficit to average.  2021 and 2023 were ~200k below average on Day 91 while 2024 ended 266k km2 surplus ice.   As usual in transitional months like March and September, SII (Sea Ice Index) shows a similar pattern with generally lower extents.

Why is this important?  All the claims of global climate emergency depend on dangerously higher temperatures, lower sea ice, and rising sea levels.  The lack of additional warming prior to 2023 El Nino is documented in a post UAH February 2024: SH Saves Global Warming.

The lack of acceleration in sea levels along coastlines has been discussed also.  See USCS Warnings of Coastal Flooding

Also, a longer term perspective is informative:

The table below shows the distribution of Sea Ice on day 91 across the Arctic Regions, on average, this year and 2006.

Region2024091Day 91 ave2024-Ave.20060912024-2006
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere1485496714589377265590138214701033497
 (1) Beaufort_Sea1070983107022675810686832301
 (2) Chukchi_Sea96600696340126069590916915
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea1087137108615198710841203017
 (4) Laptev_Sea89784589605317928965101335
 (5) Kara_Sea9350239196561536791048724536
 (6) Barents_Sea845789657875187914622588223201
 (7) Greenland_Sea771533661909109624601310170223
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence12382051384413-1462081003875234330
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago85486085308917728516913169
 (10) Hudson_Bay126090312553535551124038920514
 (11) Central_Arctic324801332354521256132393498664
 (12) Bering_Sea7244937034872100665897965514
 (13) Baltic_Sea5016561636-11471114622-64457
 (14) Sea_of_Okhotsk90066083105769602558027342633

The overall surplus to average is 266k km2, (2%).  The only major deficit is in Baffin Bay, more than offset by surpluses everywhere, especially in Okhotsk, Barents and Greenland seas.  Note Arctic ice yesterday was more than a Wadham greater than the same day in 2006.

Illustration by Eleanor Lutz shows Earth’s seasonal climate changes. If played in full screen, the four corners present views from top, bottom and sides. It is a visual representation of scientific datasets measuring Arctic ice extents.

2024 Arctic sea ice maximum a whopping 14th below average following hottest year since 1850

Officially, the maximum winter sea ice extent for 2024 was 15.01 mkm2, reached on 14 March. At an unimpressive “14th lowest” on record, this is astounding news for the winter following the “hottest year on record.” Undeterred, the US government headline writers at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) today went for “Arctic sea ice reaches a below-average maximum.” Note the long-term average (1981-2010) is only 15.65 mkm2 and 15.01 is within 2 standard deviations (see below, screencapped 14 March 2024).

From polarbearscience

Officially, the maximum winter sea ice extent for 2024 was 15.01 mkm2, reached on 14 March. At an unimpressive “14th lowest” on record, this is astounding news for the winter following the “hottest year on record.” Undeterred, the US government headline writers at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) today went for “Arctic sea ice reaches a below-average maximum.” Note the long-term average (1981-2010) is only 15.65 mkm2 and 15.01 is within 2 standard deviations (see below, screencapped 14 March 2024).

This is what the sea ice maximum extent of 15.01 mkm2 looked like on 14 March this year:

rom NOAA’s 17 January 2024 report on the “hottest year on record” [my bold] on global temperatures:

The year 2023 was the warmest year since global records began in 1850 at 1.18°C (2.12°F) above the 20th-century average of 13.9°C (57.0°F). This value is 0.15°C (0.27°F) more than the previous record set in 2016. The 10 warmest years in the 174-year record have all occurred during the last decade (2014–2023). Of note, the year 2005, which was the first year to set a new global temperature record in the 21st century, is now the 12th-warmest year on record. The year 2010, which had surpassed 2005 at the time, now ranks as the 11th-warmest year on record.

According to today’s data from today’s NSIDC report (shown below), the lowest maximum extents were reached in 2015-2018 (14.82-14.52), with 2016 being an especially warm El Nino year. It makes sense that 2017 was the lowest, since it followed the very warm summer of 2016.

However, the max extent for winter 2023 was not far behind, which is odd considering that according to NOAA, warm La Nina conditions didn’t kick in until June 2023. March ice extent for 2023 (now the 5th lowest) was still being influenced by the cold La Nina conditions that prevailed in 2021 and 2022 (2021 now 8th lowest, 2022 now 11th lowest, at 14.88, not shown).

And now 2024 max extent is the 14th lowest, following the warmest global temperature since 1850 was reached in summer of 2023?

Rarely mentioned is that 2005-2007 (weak El Nino/El Nino years) were all below this year’s extent of 15.01 and 2006 and 2007 were both among the 10 lowest extents listed above (2005 was 14.95; 2006 was 14.68, 2007 was 14.77).

It’s almost like Arctic sea ice extent in winter has almost no relationship with global temperatures!